by L. L. Muir
“Don’t worry. I don’t bite.” His attempt at humor earned him a grateful smile. “Let’s talk about your impromptu vacation, hmm? I assume you didn’t want to talk to me anymore.”
She hung her head and put her hands to her forehead like blinders, to hide her face.
“We already know you’re guilty, Rhonda. The question is, did you murder Monica Whittaker…” He paused to see her reaction. “Or do you just know who did?”
It was the last question that sent her over the edge. She pressed the tissues against her mouth and howled into them like her heart was breaking while he sat there watching.
“Was it Devon Whittaker?”
Reluctantly, she nodded. “I think so.”
“You don’t know for sure?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t understand why you thought you should leave town…unless you intended to meet up with him.”
She looked up, stunned. “I wasn’t going to meet up with him. I just thought, if I suddenly left town, you’d think…” She paused to blow her nose.
Tripp made a guess. “I’d think that you were the murderer and wouldn’t try to pin it on him?”
Rhonda nodded. “Those poor babies. I guess I don’t love them as much as I thought I did.” At that point, she started crying again.
Trip tried not to laugh. “So you’re upset because you think you let Whittaker down? You think he will be upset?” Proof of some collaboration would be helpful.
“He won’t be upset. He doesn’t know what I did, or why. He doesn’t even know…that I care about him.”
Tripp took in a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. “All right. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, how about you tell me why you think Whittaker murdered his wife.”
“That weekend, I’m pretty sure Devon was the man Monica was going to meet. I… I looked at that burner phone when she wasn’t looking. He’d sent her a link to a song—you know the song about liking piña coladas and getting caught in the rain? That one. It’s about a couple getting back together again. And it made sense. Devon was really struggling. He still loved her. And whoever left that phone on her desk knew everything she liked.”
Rhonda sighed and pushed the box of tissues away. He guessed it meant she was done feeling sorry for the guy.
“There were a couple of things Monica said that made it sound like she thought it was Devon, too.”
“Was she mad?”
The woman shook her head emphatically. “Just the opposite. I think she was excited. She had plenty of reason to want him back, you know? The mystery romance was a good excuse. Either way, she was really excited to see who it was.”
Tripp scribbled in his notebook while he took a minute to think. If it was the husband and Monica would have been pleased, then why murder her? Maybe they’d fought over something unexpected. Or maybe the guy had planned to kill her all along, to make it look like some secret admirer might have done it.
Or, instead of a secret admirer, maybe someone who’d suffered because of a case she’d litigated. Though the SBI--the State Bureau of Investigation--had people looking into her cases, he’d heard nothing back yet.
He was right back where he started from, wishing Maddy was with him, reading the room.
He looked up from the notebook and caught Ms. Thorne off guard. “You might have killed your boss so you could console Devon Whittaker. Maybe take over as mother to David and Millicent?”
She sat up straight on the edge of her seat. “Of course not!” But then her eyes flashed up and to the left, and he suspected she was imagining that little fantasy playing out, enjoying the idea of it. “I love those kids, but Devon—I mean, Mr. Whittaker—loved their mother. He would have done anything to get her back—” Her eyes widened when she realized she was still making the case for Devon killing his wife.
“I think we’re done here,” he said, sure there was nothing more she could tell him. “You can go. I’ll have an officer take you back to your car.”
“I can go?”
“Anywhere you like. Home, even. I’m sure your bosses will be relieved you’re all right.” He got up and walked out, then went looking for the sheriff. He was curious to hear about the missing persons case that made Deputy Kimber think of the Muir sisters…
21
Before leaving Ketchum, Tripp called to complain to the director of the SBI. He knew coroners were hard to come by, but Falls County needed their own. It was ridiculous that his murder victim had to be shipped off to Boise for an autopsy. And after a full week since the body had been found, he still didn’t have the results he needed. So a killer might actually get away due to poor staffing.
It was a great argument.
Two hours later, he got the call he’d been waiting for. It came just in time for him to bypass the Spirit Falls exit and head southeast to Dinkville. Maddy would want to hear the results, and he couldn’t wait to see her face. It had been two long days.
Of course, he was also anxious to see the two together—if they answered the door—so he could compare them and see what details he should have noticed, that might have given them away.
It was 2:30 when he parked his car directly behind Maddy’s SUV as he had the day before. Then he checked in with the deputy on duty.
“Things have been quiet,” the officer reported. “Except for one of the sisters bringing me coffee this morning, that is.”
Tripp tried not to read anything into that. “I’m not here to relieve you, by the way. I may only be a minute.”
“I understand.”
Tripp glanced up at the windows and thought a curtain moved on the main floor. But he wasn’t about to make a fool of himself in front of the other deputy, so he tried texting first. If they wouldn’t answer a text, they probably wouldn’t answer the door.
Autopsy report is back. Would like to talk to Maddy about it. Not going to beg.
At the last second, he decided to erase the last part and send just the first two sentences.
He leaned against the house-side of the deputy’s car and crossed his feet. Before he’d figured out what to do with his hands, the front door cracked open. Very calmly, he straightened and headed up to the steps, completely expecting the door to slam shut before he reached it. When he made it to the top step, it opened a little wider. Maddy—he was sure it was Maddy—stood blocking the way.
“I will let you in on the condition that you do everything I say.”
“Maddy?”
“Yeah.”
“Agreed.”
She narrowed her eyes for a second, then stepped back and allowed him inside. “You have to be very quiet.”
He nodded and stepped softly as he followed her through the foyer and into the kitchen. She pointed to the little table where he’d had coffee once before, with Mac. Maddy grabbed the coffee pot and two cups and came to sit across from him.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “We couldn’t let you sleep on the couch last night. We should have, but we couldn’t.”
He shook his head and kept his voice low. “Let’s forget yesterday.”
She looked into his eyes and he thought she was gearing up to tell him something important, but in the end, she said nothing at all.
“The autopsy,” he said. “Monica Whittaker had a broken neck. The crushed vertebrae suggest she fell from a height between ten and twenty feet, depending on the landing surface. The bruises on her neck were created on impact. She wasn’t strangled.”
“But it wasn’t an accident, surely.”
“Doubtful. If it was some strange suicide, I doubt she would have removed her clothes. And few scenarios would have allowed her to fall in the water afterward. There are no buildings on the water. Even if her death was an accident, someone moved her.”
“Was she, you know…”
“Raped? No. And no recent intercourse.” When he noticed Maddy blushing, he could have kicked himself. But it was too late to guard his words. All he could do was change the subject. “Her car was
found in a shuttle parking lot at the base of Spirit Mountain. She must have met the killer there, then they backtracked to the lake.”
Maddy nodded, but she was distracted. He hoped some sort of intuition was coming to her, but she wasn’t touching anything but her own coffee cup.
He waited for her to look up. “Do you remember thinking that Monica’s assistant had some big secret, besides the fact that she was in love with the husband?”
Maddy nodded again, paying close attention this time.
“Her secret was the fact that she thought the guy stalking Monica was Devon Whittaker. When she left town, she was hoping it would divert attention from him.”
“I bet Devon doesn’t know how she feels, or what she tried to do for him.”
“Sounds like it. But I don’t think it was him. Rhonda said she read one of the messages that made her think he was trying to win his wife back. If it was him, he would know what she liked. But if he really wanted her back, he wouldn’t have killed her.”
“Unless…” Her face lit up. “Unless it was an accident!”
“Exactly. I would like to head up to the lake. Will you come with me? For the next week, Sheriff Peterson will keep a man at the house around the clock, unless we solve this sooner. So you won’t have to worry about your sister while we’re gone.”
Her swift intake of air made him think she’d completely forgotten about Mac. “I want to go, but I need to talk to her first,” she whispered. Her phone started to vibrate on the countertop. But it wasn’t a phone. She jumped to her feet, grabbed the fancy disk that looked like a Victorian UFO, and hurried off to the far side of the kitchen. She held the thing up to her ear and certainly treated it like a cell phone. “Mac?”
She turned back, looked at him, and grimaced. “Yeah. He is. I was just going to explain to him—” She turned away again and had a long conversation, but she spoke low so he couldn’t understand her. Finally, she tucked the thing in the front pocket of her hoodie and came back to the table. “Um, that was Mac.”
“Mac? Isn’t she here?” He shook his head. “What did she do, sneak away? It could be dangerous—”
“She didn’t sneak away. She’s…here. I can’t explain. I won’t explain. And you can’t expect me to, ever. Do you understand?”
Tripp thought back to the story Lance King told him only a few hours ago, a story that would probably haunt him for a very long time. He grabbed Maddy’s bare hand before she could suspect what he was going to do, then he held it between his own.
“I promise. I swear. I will never demand answers you don’t want to give. You can have your secrets.” He let go of her hand and she slowly pulled it back and put it in her lap. “Could you tell I was being honest?”
Reluctantly, she nodded.
“Good. Did you tell your sister you’re coming with me?”
“No. Actually,” she smiled, “she told me.”
22
Forty minutes northeast of Spirit Falls City, the natural falls for which the city is named pour into a shallow canyon and eventually feed into Falls Lake. From Dinkville, it was only a twenty-five-minute drive, but to Maddy, the time slipped by much too fast.
It might be the last time she ever rode in his vehicle. It might be the last time they would be alone. And she couldn’t help wondering if, a year from now, she might kick herself for keeping quiet.
Tripp reached over, picked up her left hand, and rested both their hands on the center console. His fingers looked deceptively pale entwined with the dark brown fingers of her gloves.
He smiled tentatively. “Did I scare you back there, when I grabbed your bare hand?”
Scare her? No.
Thrill her, absolutely, though she could never admit it. Flirting with him would only make leaving more painful, later. But she wasn’t going to insult him by pulling her hand away.
“Yeah, you scared me. I thought you might be angry that we wouldn’t answer the door last night, and I didn’t want to know just how angry. I felt bad enough as it was.”
“That was a pretty apology. I accept.” He squeezed her fingers and winked at the same time.
“So, what are we looking for at the lake?”
“Something I might not remember right. Something high the victim might have fallen from. A building close to the water that I’ve just forgotten. I’ve been around the lake twice, but then again, I wasn’t looking for a diving board, was I?”
“Devon Whittaker doesn’t have a lake house, does he? Or maybe his family?”
“No. His family is from Boise. And Monica was from Billings. The only lake house tied to her was Sinclair’s, because of the office party.”
“And you can’t get a search warrant for it, right?”
He bounced his eyebrows and smiled. “Unless it has something very high near the water.”
“Like a diving board.”
“Like anything that would hold an average-sized woman. A diving board would qualify if there was something beneath it hard enough to brake a neck.”
“Or shallow water.”
“Keep talking and I might just put you on the phone with the judge, to convince him to sign a warrant.”
In the silence that followed, Maddy could almost feel her sister prodding at her, urging her to break the bad news before Barney Fife started getting ideas. But by the sly glances he kept sending her way, she was afraid it was already too late.
He took an ominous breath and squeezed her fingers again. “You know I didn’t just bring you with me to help find a killer, right?”
“I suspected.”
“All the way to Sun Valley this morning, I just kept thinking that everything would have been better if you’d been with me. The long stretches, the fall leaves, even the conversation with Rhonda Thorne. And when I got the call from the coroner—”
“How terribly romantic.”
They laughed together. Then he got serious again, but she couldn’t think of what to say to stop him. Or maybe she didn’t want to.
“When this is all over and we’re finished playing Sherlock and Watson, I wondered if I could see you. Socially.”
“I’m not really social—”
“Neither am I. That’s why I think it might be, you know, comfortable.”
“Comfortable.” She gave a little laugh. “While it does sound…charming, I had better tell you something before this conversation goes any farther.”
His smile dropped. “You don’t like me.”
She laughed again. “Of course I do.” She could feel herself blushing. “You must know I do. But, well, I’m not going to be around long enough to start seeing you.” She cleared her throat to get rid of the emotions gathering there like frantic bargain hunters at a pop-up garage sale. “Mac and I. We’re moving out of state, actually.”
“Where?” His voice was low, gruff. And his attention was suddenly glued to the road.
“I… I can’t tell you that. It’s one of those personal things—”
“Secrets—”
“I can’t tell you about.”
He nodded. “You’re right. I promised. And really, I don’t want to know those kinds of things.”
“Those kinds of things?”
“Things having to do with your…secrets. That’s all.”
She watched him for a long minute, but he wouldn’t look her way. “I’m sorry. I know our timing stinks. I just didn’t tell you before because we worried it would make us look suspicious.”
“Yep. You’re right. I understand.” He kept his expression clear, but his chin and lips moved like there were words in his mouth trying to get out. It would have been comical had her own heart not been breaking.
Comfortable? How sweet was that?
“Look,” he said, like he couldn’t keep his mouth shut any longer. “I just have one question. It’s a simple one. You just need to answer yes or no. Okay?”
“I’ll try.”
“That will have to do.” He finally looked at her, then split his att
ention between the road and her face. “Did you and Mac happen to make this decision—to move away—in the last, say, twenty-four hours?”
Maddy sucked her lips between her teeth while she tried to decide whether or not to lie to him.
“Never mind,” he said, in that same gruff voice. “I have my answer.”
23
Maddy was miserable the rest of the ride to the lake. The tension in the car was unbearable, even though it didn’t seem to bother Tripp. In fact, he seemed a little smug that he’d managed to get information out of her without her saying a word. But every once in a while, he turned away and watched out his side window, and she suspected he was trying to hide just how pissed he was.
She was running away from him. She may as well have worded it just that way, and she should have told him at the house instead of going with him.
But Mac had insisted. She’d even told Maddy what coat to wear and given her a message to pass on to Tripp. “Tell him,” she’d said, “an inch to the left. When the time comes, he’ll know what I mean.”
Instructions from Mac should never be taken lightly. But Maddy hadn’t passed the message along yet. At the moment, she worried he wouldn’t take her seriously, or worse, wouldn’t listen at all.
Instead of asking for help, Tripp consulted his GPS to find Sinclair’s cabin. A sprawling yard, perfectly manicured, was bordered by relatively new forest. Other than the cabin itself, there wasn’t so much as a tree tall enough to fit the bill. And they couldn’t get close to the house due to the gate and fence that started at the bottom of the drive and ran around the property.
Tripp drove around for a few minutes, looking at the house from all angles, from a distance. After finding nothing promising, he finally turned back toward the marina.
Out of the blue, Maddy wondered if Mac knew Tripp would get angry on the drive if they went to the lake together. And if she wanted him mad, why give him a warning?
Maddy couldn’t imagine what her sister had meant by Tripp moving an inch to the left, she hoped it didn’t involve kissing. How could you miss someone’s lips by that much? However, looking back at the only time he’d kissed her, he’d missed her mouth by a whole lot more than just an inch.